


But It Might Be Hard to Handle

by Razzledazzy



Series: On An Island Called Piffling Vale [2]
Category: Wooden Overcoats
Genre: Accidental Marriage, Breaking & Entering, But out of love, Eric experiences the year of Realizing Things, In a sense, It's more like, M/M, Making Out, Mild discussion of poverty and body image, accidental proposal, but that's apparently not an AO3 tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2017-07-25
Packaged: 2018-12-06 16:48:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11604765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Razzledazzy/pseuds/Razzledazzy
Summary: You know what they say, when a coffin lid shuts.... somewhere else a window opens.Otherwise known as 'Eric Chapman masters the art of romantically breaking into someone's house'.





	But It Might Be Hard to Handle

Having sex with Rudyard Funn was proving to be simultaneously the best and worst decision of Eric Chapman’s life.

The best because the animosity between them was finally understandable. Who would have thought that their entire “rivalry” was composed of repressed feelings and sexual tension? Or at least, most of it was. They still argued-- well, they bickered. They bickered a lot, actually.

Eric wouldn’t expect anything less of Rudyard.

The worst because now he was constantly _worried_ about Rudyard. How the other undertaker had made it this long without dying was a miracle, an honest to God _miracle_. Eric had run out of fingers to count the times he had come in and stopped something potentially horrible from happening to anyone at Funn Funerals. It was like the Funn siblings (and obviously by extension, Georgie) navigated life with an inborn impulse to run headlong into danger under any circumstance.

It was going to drive him grey before his time.

It’s something he should have expected, reasonably, he should have seen it coming. He just didn’t realize how becoming intimately familiar with Rudyard’s body would open up this issue.

Rudyard was thin.

Not just thin as in lean or lanky, because Rudyard was definitely both those things in spades, but the kind of thin that came from a lack of good food.

No, Rudyard was thin as in Eric could feel each of his ribs as his fingers skimmed over his torso. He could count each of them, if he wished.

At the beginning, he didn’t think much of it. It took an offhand comment from Georgie for him to realize that there was something very wrong in Piffling Vale, and that it was entirely his fault.

“Beets for dinner again?” Georgie had asked, sending both Rudyard and Antigone red in the face.

It hadn’t seemed so important then. At the time Eric was busy admiring the way the flush spread across Rudyard’s cheekbones caught the light.

Later that night, though, Eric found himself twisting in his sheets. Unable to sleep without Rudyard there to steal all of the covers.

There were a lot of things about Rudyard that slotted comfortably into Eric Chapman’s life. Things he missed, when the other wasn’t around. So far he’d been completely unable to convince Rudyard to stay over for more than a night at a time.

So tonight, there was nothing there to distract him from his thoughts.

The Funn’s were poor-- the eating nothing but root vegetables for dinner sort of poor. Why had it taken him this long to notice? How had it gotten this bad?

If he had stopped for one second to consider the overall impact of his arrival in Piffling Vale, he would have seen this. Stupid, _stupid_ Chapman.

The town seemed so small that he thought he’d be able to slip in as a quirky new resident. Maybe distrusted for a while, but ultimately left alone. Success had followed him like a shadow, even when he didn’t want it to.

Nothing ever goes to plan, does it? So much for laying low.

Fact of the matter was, he was somehow running a frankensteinian funeral parlor, complete with a bowling alley, cafe, bakery, and all sorts of other extraneous services no one in Piffling Vale really needed. And the truth was, he didn’t even need to perform funerals anymore to make money.

At some point running the funeral side of things had become more about getting the attention of the Funn siblings rather than doing good business, and and because of that he was simultaneously hurting them all.

What a fool he’d been.

“I’ve got to do something,” he said to his ceiling. The moon wasn’t full enough for Eric’s declaration to be dramatic, but it lit the floors of his room all the same as he walked across the smooth wood to his closet. Nothing else was listening. It was lonely here at night. No Rudyard, no mice.

He tossed on some comfortable clothes, the kind that he hadn’t worn in public since he came to Piffling Vale. Maybe if he had, things had gone differently. If everyone had seen him looking a little more human and a little less put together in his act.

He was going to make things right.

 

* * *

 

It was harder than he thought to move the equipment from his morgue to the Funn’s morgue without making any noise. If he had his way, everything that Antigone had tried to steal was now going to wind up in the basement of Funn Funerals. After all she had tried rather valiantly to take it from him the first time around.

It was the least he could do really, after the whole thing with the clowns.

Breaking into Funn Funerals was almost depressingly easy, a long time ago he would have said it was disappointing. Their lock had been bump-keyed so many times all he had to do was tap harshly on the doorknob for it to unlock. The door swung open into the darkened showroom of the funeral parlor, and Eric didn’t bother to look for a lightswitch before bringing everything inside.  

Really, Eric should have known better. He was trained better. His old colleagues would roll over in their graves if they saw the way Georgie Crusoe got the drop on him. Quite literally.

“What in the fuck do you think’re you doing in here?” Georgie asked, surprisingly nonchalant considering she had knocked Piffling Vale’s most popular resident to the floor in a headlock.

“I’m fixing things!” He hissed, putting a finger to his lips and begging for Georgie to learn the meaning of a whisper.

“What sort of things?” She asked, releasing him and stepping away.

Eric rolled over, not getting off the floor. He stared at the ceiling as he contemplated. Exactly why was he here? What was he trying to accomplish?

He settled on: “Everything.”

“That’s a big thing to try and fix.”

“Well, it’s my fault it’s all broken.”

“You know, you’re starting to sound like Rudyard. Christ, it must be contagious,” Georgie elbowed him, before standing up. “You want help moving these things?”

“Could you?” Eric sighed in relief.

“Yeah, ‘course. You should see how Antigone’s face is going to light up when she sees this... It’s worth it. To see them happy once and awhile,” Georgie said, lifting an embalming machine over her head like it didn’t weigh several hundred pounds. “but you’d know all about that, obviously. Ruydard’s come home a few times looking _very_ pleased with himself recently.”

Eric flushed, sitting up and resting his head on his knee. “Yeah?”

“Yep, happiest I’ve seen him in… well, ever.”

“Really? Ever?”

“You have to understand, they both haven’t had very happy lives. Overall, things have been tough for them, especially recently,” Georgie replied, disappearing with the machine down the stairs to the morgue. Hopefully Georgie would be quiet enough to deposit them without waking Antigone.

Eric didn’t move from his spot, even as Georgie started walking back up the stairs.

“I’ve made them both miserable haven’t I? I mean, by just by existing,” Eric sighed, running a hand through his hair-- realizing at that moment that he hadn’t even taken the time to brush it before coming over.

“What? That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” Georgie had the gall to laugh at him.

“Stop, it’s true. I’m the reason they lost so much business and… why are you still laughing?” Georgie was now doubled over. Laughing even harder at Eric as he continued to talk.

Georgie braced herself against one of the morgue tables he’d brought over until she stopped laughing.

“Georgie shhh, you’ll wake them,” he pleaded, gesticulating towards the ceiling. Though there was no guarantee that the Funn twins would be the type to sleep above the shop anyway. For all he knew Antigone could be, and likely was, kipping in the morgue.

“You can’t be serious,” she finally said.

“I’m afraid I am?” Eric questioned, no longer entirely sure of what was going on.

She slid the table to the side, making more room on the floor so she could sit down next to him. Their previous task forgotten.

“Listen to me Eric Chapman because I’m only going to say this once-- probably. You don’t know how things were before you got here, so I’m going to tell you just what Piffling Vale was like. Almost the entire town thought Antigone Funn was dead, because she was both too scared or too sick to leave the morgue. She lived down there, for years. _Years,_ Erich Chapman. Without the sun. Rudyard wasn’t even seen as a person half of the time. He was a mark that someone had died, like a reaper. If the reaper were known to stand next to a grave tapping a stopwatch and yelling ‘get in the ground already’. Yeah, the financials were a bit better, but they didn’t have friends. They barely left this building for anything aside from work. Living the same shelled routine their parents carved out for them, just like their parents before them, and so on.

“Things might have been better money-wise, but they weren’t living, Eric. They were just as lifeless as the bodies they buried.” Georgie finished her speech by poking a finger into Eric’s chest for emphasis, startling the undertaker.

He stayed silent for a moment, “Was it really that bad?”

“Compared to now? Yeah, yeah it was. They might be struggling, but they’ve also never had so much fun just living.”

“Still, I think it’s best for everyone that I drop out of the funeral business. I might have been good at them, but it was never what I really wanted to do. I want to help people.”

“So what’re you going to do now?” Georgie asked, pushing the table around with her foot.

“You know, I did study medicine at Oxford.... Dr. Edgeware could use a break.”

“Watch out, he might try and marry you if you did that.”

Eric answered without replying, “Who? Rudyard?”

“No, Dr. Edgeware duh. Wait, why did you assume I was talking about Rudyard?” Georgie’s eyes then went wide with realization.

“Eric, do you want to marry Rudyard?” Georgie asked suspiciously, “I didn’t think it was that serious between you too yet.”

“Of course- um, I don’t think. Well-- ah…” Truthfully, he hadn’t even considered it, but now that he had it was the only thing he could think about. Would he marry Rudyard? Would Rudyard say yes if he asked?

“I _might_ want to marry Rudyard.” Chapman answered hesitantly. Georgie’s face lit up, and then abruptly changed in response to something off to the left.

He was halfway to asking her what was wrong when he heard the creak of a step.

“If it will get you both to shut up, I’ll go wake the bloody vicar right now. It is _three_ in the morning. Why is everyone having a sit down in the middle of the showroom?”

Eric blanched, turning his head to the side to see the silhouette of Rudyard on the stairs. His hair was the kind of messy that Eric had come to start associating with lazy mornings… and the sight of Rudyard being well fucked.

His heart flipped in his chest several times and caught in his ribs.

“What?” Was all he managed to choke out in response.

Rudyard expression shifted from annoyed to bemused as he rubbed at his eyes. It was impossibly endearing, and Eric could still feel his heart racing ahead of him to draw his own conclusions.

“No? Okay, but everyone is going back to sleep,” Rudyard bantered back, even though Eric hadn’t _really_ answered. The shorter man quickly made his way down the rest of the stairs to haul Eric to his feet.

“I’ll finish up here,” Georgie offered, slipping away from the couple with the excuse.

“Wait-” Eric protested in a daze, toes tripping over the lip of the step and almost sending him careening into Rudyard’s back as he was pulled along.

How _had_ this gotten so out of hand this quickly? Every time Rudyard burst into his life, all notion of responsibility and rational thought seemed to go out the bloody window- and of course tonight was proving to be no exception.

In his daze, they made it through upper hallway and into Rudyard’s room. Barely. Before Chapman could even attempt to process everything that had just happened, he found himself pressed against Rudyard’s bedroom door with familiar hands in his hair, familiar lips on his neck, and a familiar knee in between his legs. He touched Rudyard’s cheek and brought him up, taking in the view of him- tangled hair, blown pupils, open lips- before meeting him halfway in a kiss that made him forget every worry he’d had.  Just like the first time. Well, not the first time. That involved a coffin a fair bit more panic than this did.

“Christ, Rudyard,” Eric gasped as Rudyard moved to bite down on the skin of his neck again, sending jolts to all the right places. Jolts that Rudyard seemed to sense and follow with his hands, pulling up on the stretchy cotton shirt to divest him of it entirely. The touches ranged from being light enough to brush along his skin to a firm grip that dug into the sides of his hips, pulling them closer together.

“I’m going to keep waking you up at 3am if this the reaction I get,” Eric panted back.

Rudyard snorted, the corners of his eyes crinkling as he started to laugh, “You _broke_ into our house!”

“Is that really important right now? Please- _god_!” Chapman moaned hoarsely, all of his focus going into Rudyard’s teeth as the made a trail from his pectorals to his abdomen and back up to his jawline again. His head hit the wood of the door as he pushed his hips up against Rudyard’s hands.

“I think we rather need to have a discussion,” Rudyard teased, his fingers never straying from their teasing motions.

Eric grinned, turning his head to the side to nuzzle into Rudyard’s messy hair. “About?”

Rudyard smiled, avoiding looking Eric in the eyes, his fingers going back to muss up his iconic blond hair. Leaning forward until their foreheads touched, keeping him words to himself and taking the moment to compose himself.

“Do you really want to marry me?” He said softly, almost with wonder.

Eric gave a stilted, short laugh, bringing his hands up to cup both sides of Rudyard’s face. Their noses bumping together as they moved forward to a softer, chaste kiss.

“I love you, you know? I think…. I think that I do. If this is you asking, Rudyard Funn, then yes. I will marry you. Just not when it’s three in the morning. It can wait.”

**Author's Note:**

> So I really wanted to continue my original fic, and this was intended as a chapter two for that. But then I realized how well 'What I Want, You've Got' works as a oneshot so I decided to make it a series instead.
> 
> Catch me on the Wooden Overcoats discord server: https://discord.gg/a7kzYYK
> 
> Check out my profile for links you can find me at.


End file.
